Trentonian editorial: Bungee jumper

How much more tax money would President Obama get by his proposed tax hike on the $250,000-plus set?

About $80 billion a year.

How much are President Obama’s projected deficits over the coming years?

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About $1 trillion a year.

How much is $1 trillion ? A lot more than $80 billion. A trillion is a thousand billions.

Nevertheless, Obama’s acting like he’s ready to leap off the fiscal cliff if he doesn’t get his tax hike on the “rich” as a “solution” to the country’s fiscal problems.

And no wonder he seems perfectly willing to jump. Look closely. He has a bungee cord strapped on.

As he’s no doubt keenly aware, polls show that Republicans will be blamed for shoving Obama over the cliff if he decides to take a flying leap. Public opinion won’t even be close, the polls say. Obama will emerge unscathed.

He’s succeeded in snookering the country into believe that everything would be just dandy if the rich would only pay “a little bit more” and if only those obstructionist mean old Republicans would stop looking out for the wealthy and think about the good of the country instead.

He’s succeeded in this ruse because his minions in the media enabled him to. They absolutely refuse to mention in their reporting that the hornswoggling president is proposing a billion-dollar “solution” to a trillion-dollar problem. If ever there was math that doesn’t work, this is it.

Obama insists on his stick-it-to-’em tax hike even though Republicans have proposed high-income deduction cutoffs which would raised just about as much revenue. True, Republicans are vague about the spending restraints they demand. But Obama doesn’t even reach the point of vague. He insists on putting off this topic until later and meanwhile on blowing another $50 billion of another round of “stimulus.”

Besides having a bungee cord in the form of polls showing Republicans will get the blame for a fiscal-cliff plunge, Obama may figure, “Hey, what the heck?” Barring another recession (a big gamble), a fiscal cliff leap would bring in truckloads more tax revenues with an across-the-board hike, top to bottom. Plus, it would ax Pentagon spending. To many of Obama’s compadres on the left, that sounds like a win-win.

Since Obama won the election campaigning on a screw-the-rich platform, we say again let him have his “solution” — and the ownership title to it when it starts to look like a economic flop, which likely would be sooner rather than later. Then — with Obama at last out of excuses — there can be a course change with real solutions instead of cheap demagoguery.